Scientific Institutions as Sites for Dissemination and Contestation: Emergence of Colonial Calcutta as a Science City

Abstract

Scientific institutions are modern icons. These came to India as part of the colonial baggage and soon became the carriers of new ideas and in fact symbolized modernity itself. Was it is a smooth process? What debates did institutionalization spark? Quest for knowledge has never been alien to Indian society. And there were institutions too in pre-colonial times. What new changes came in the nineteenth century? Can these be explained in terms of metropolis–periphery relationship or impact/response studies? Did the process of institutionalization differ in colonial and non-colonial settings? Same could be true for the process of professionalization also. How to ‘straddle the spatial and epistemological divide’ between metropolis and colony? Was this a one-way transfer? One can add, was this knowledge merely or largely derivative? Could it produce autodidacts or intellectual migrants who could hold on their own? Is indigenous ‘original and unsullied’ to be seen mostly in opposition to modern/scientific knowledge? Could they interact? Could they change? Was a synthesis or coproduction possible? The present paper attempts to address these questions with the help of examples and illustrations from a colonial city, Calcutta. Even before South Asia was properly colonized, numerous travelers and traders had brought to fore the characteristics and peculiarities of it people and society. India was no tabula rasa. But as the conquest began, new forts, ports, and cities were established. Thus came into being the new port cities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. These were to witness a distinct break with the past. In the new cities, new institutions were to be established, not in the older cities of Delhi, Hyderabad, or Lahore; some of these institutions were to become the carriers of new knowledge. It is not easy to see in them sites for exchange of knowledge as it involves a two-way process, which colonial conditions would seldom permit. They mostly functioned as sites for dissemination and also contestation. The transfer of knowledge, though purported to be osmotic, was not really a one-way simple process; it sparked debates and produced cross-currents. This can be seen in full-flow, for example, in the history of Calcutta.